The Project

It is a fact that technology in our age is offering countless solutions and infrastructures that could change the way we act and perform activities, and that innovation is lately directly linked with emerging technologies that are applied in various domains and revolutionise them, such as manufacturing, healthcare, consumer services, media, etc.

However, despite the investments performed in the last decade in the field of public sector modernisation and automation, the bitter truth is that “we are not there yet” when it comes to fully exploiting the benefits of ICT for governance towards aiding the public sector to meet the new societal needs that are emerging. Morover, it was typical for the public sector to adopt existing approaches and technologies with long track records in other domains, thus the process of promoting innovation was practically non-existent.

Therefore there is an urgent need for better, more efficient, effective and quality delivering public services. A need that will not only transform the public sector itself and cover the needs of public sector employees and policy makers, but that will also cater for citizens and businesses, thus benefiting all stakeholders and opening new innovation directions that will in turn accelerate the EU economy and will improve quality of life, powered by a renovated public sector that will be in the position to play a central and active role in innovation diffusion and technology take-up.

SONNETS’ aims at renovating the way the public sector operates by suggesting a concrete set of actions that will place the public sector in the front line of tackling societal challenges, armoured with the right ammunition and with the right people that could take over the necessary tasks and activities.

SONNETS’s concept for delivering its roadmap is based on the following major sub-concepts, which are all closely related and can be witnessed as a quadruple helix:

Needs Identification through evidence-based research approaches and methods

Innovations Identification and Gap Analysis

Impact generation through Community Building and Intense Networking

Innovation Transfer through best practice identification in multidisciplinary areas and impact assessment

SONNETS will provide an innovative methodological framework for public sector organisations and related stakeholders to accelerate their transformation processes. SONNETS will set the way for the identification, analysis and take-up of emerging technologies that hold the potential infuse real value to public services managing the exponentially increasing “born digital” data and facilitating end-to-end security and privacy.